Elizabeth Murray is having a bit of a moment. A string of recent museum and gallery shows has renewed interest in the American abstractionist, and now a painting long thought lost has resurfaced and will make its debut at Duke University‘s Nasher Museum of Art this fall. Experts say the work captures a pivotal moment in the development of her distinctive style: irregularly shaped paintings that catch the eye with colorful aplomb.
First exhibited at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York in 1978, Murray’s painting Bob (1977) was purchased by a pharmaceutical company and languished at its headquarters in North Carolina for over 45 years before the building, plagued by asbestos, was demolished. By the time the work was gifted to the Nasher in 2021, it was in poor condition. It since underwent an extensive restoration, largely funded by a $100,000 grant from Bank of America.
Over more than a year of restoration, the painting was fitted with a new stretcher and given specialized treatment to repair cracking caused by Murray’s habit of layering wet paint over wet paint. It is believed that the work will be presented to the public in a museum context for the first time this fall, as it had been previously unknown to Murray scholars.
